


Transmigration

by sunlitwitch



Category: Ebon Light (Visual Novel)
Genre: Canon-Typical Violence, F/M, Fluff and Angst, Gen, Headcanon, Hurt/Comfort, Light Smut, Reincarnation
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-05
Updated: 2021-01-05
Packaged: 2021-03-15 23:42:28
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,506
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28572459
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sunlitwitch/pseuds/sunlitwitch
Summary: Each time Alenca loses a lover, her life begins again. Major spoiler warning.
Relationships: Alenca Goffil | Main Character / Axsix Milirose, Alenca Goffil | Main Character/Duliae Laushust, Alenca Goffil | Main Character/Ernol Milirose, Alenca Goffil | Main Character/Haron Milirose, Alenca Goffil | Main Character/Vadeyn Milirose, Laceaga Darhal/Alenca Goffil | Main Character
Kudos: 16





	Transmigration

**Author's Note:**

> The concept for this was inspired by [Lover Reincarnated](https://archiveofourown.org/works/23047915/chapters/55122097) by @glowingbadger in the FE3H fandom. I very much recommend it (though content warnings apply)!

It was the first: or to the point he was the first… and throughout the fraught nature of her many lifetimes she would often think of their time together—both those unchanging and those lost deep within the dependent clauses of what only a life with intimate contact could bring. There were moments even in the future, amidst other intimacies (and unavoidably, her time spent with Ernol) she would find a strange comfort in his presence alone, observing odd idiosyncrasies that she knew bone deep or unraveling machinations she’d seen play out a dozen times before. One fond particular was the life in which she passed her the notion of reincarnation to him as some bland hypothetical, just to test his reply.

He offered only that placating smile that did not quite meet his eyes and said: “darling, if we are to entertain the ‘what if’ then limitless possibility could follow. And still,” as his lips brushed the ridge of her knuckles, “I’m flattered at the implication that perhaps you might choose such a life with me again.”

She hadn’t the heart to press the issue. The fact was that she had chosen him over the course of several lifetimes (no less than three), had both raised a family alongside him and hadn’t and when all was said and done, felt too tired and too vexed by the possibility he might question the truth.

To tell the tale: the first life began as expected. From Vanya’s hands she had taken the steaming cup of poison unknowing and lived as vigorously as she was able despite all lack of prior experience. In many ways, it was the sweetest and simultaneously the most painful: in this life she was still shy in matters of the heart, susceptible to the machinations of those around her and fixated on what it meant to embody a heroic destiny. It was an existence punctuated by the horrors of loss and the evils of a society that lived and died at war. There was sight of Imre pitched over the railing of the Bastion, wrenching her arm from the socket. The murder of Mietwen at the hands of Gawloyes and the Cuthintal gone mad. Later, the moment in which she saw Calipoa tried and executed for treason (the official designations: insubordinate conduct, refusal of orders, desertion and many others beside). She’d seen Laceaga cut down a throng of fleeing workers from the belly of the mines in Zikarik, sinking arrows indiscriminately in the backs and throats of men and women, the elderly and the infirm. Even Haron did not last, his flame burning so brightly and yet, in the end reduced to soot and ash. Just like all the rest.

It was Duliae that endured, like a rock that could only be chipped away by gale and water and time. Only he managed to live fully, to the end of his days… and it was with that first passing that the cycle started in earnest again, for the night in which she laid her body down in grief she awoke the next morning in Vanya’s hut. 

So she drank the poison. She lived again.

The second life was far more splendid than the first. Rather than explore, she danced. From the moment her eyes settled on him on the harbour, she smiled sweetly and announced her imminent collapse. As he cornered her the first time in the halls of his estate, she teased and alluded and conjectured in ways she shouldn’t have known. It all, in truth, felt very much like a game.

It was a game played masterfully. After all, even after a single life she knew the rules. At first pass, she’d fallen into Duliae’s arms after so much painful infatuation and in a set of circumstances so sweet she savoured each and every recollection. But here Alenca elected to seduce and enthrall. She knew precisely the way she could affect him, knew how he loved to see the whimsy and innocence hidden so artfully beneath the mask. Her wardrobe was flush with outfits of every hue: cyan body wraps with plunging necklines, tyrian purple catsuits, canary yellow sundresses and deep crimson shawls. She knew he adored color and fanfare, knew that he relished what it meant to be alive; to be vibrant and whole and unfettered.

He loved to see her hair nestled in the dew and grass of early morning, a book on her lap as if expecting him. Sometimes she would steal to his window at night long after she’d gotten her house near the docks, just to steal a kiss. The boyish glimmer in his lidded eyes was heady. She had the power to touch him in places only she could know.

This extended to their sensuality and the new memories began to blend with the old. Alenca’s taste for Duliae was fathomless. The way he looked bound in silk rope, pupils blown wide and coursing with need on the night of their victory during the Dianoth succession crisis; the noises he made exploring her body against a tree outside a crowded Lioran ballroom and oh, the licentious sounds. The slick of his lean form on hers in wondrous and colorful grottos of Crimson Lake and the color and light that played around them. In this incarnation she was bolder, more adventuresome and for that, she again discovered sides to him she might otherwise have missed. The thrill in knowing how completely she could trust an otherwise untrustworthy man, introduced a new danger and a new set of experiences that made their second life together truly unforgettable.

In no particular order they went about exploring and (to the extent that they were able) resolving the dilemmas of the world: the enigma of manipulated and abused werewolves in Manos. The invasion of Zikarik. The interminable web of secrets within Coracanda. The welter of the Rothlei syndicates that claimed their life. Each was more difficult than the last, presenting its own set of challenges but with each, she grew stronger… Until the end.

In this life, she watched him die in front of her.

Perhaps she’d tested some invisible boundary. Gambled with fate and lost. The details of his expression in that final moment would forever be raw; they would sometimes wake her in an inconsolable, unintelligible grief—even in the lives to come. He was calculating to the last, even as they were set upon during the escape. Down the channel. Nobody should have known, should have seen their exit and for one moment she saw him and then, in a spray of carnage and a flood of heat she did not but rather, the remainder of him. Parts of him. Her body splayed on the deck, head against the flailing bow. The space where his head, his arm should be. Then, nothing.

She awoke again in Vanya’s hut.

On her third life, she wished for the life they might’ve had. She drank the poison, went through the motions and certainly did unravel the skein of problems to which the Gha’alian Empire was uniquely susceptible. But this time their courtship was slow. Alenca allowed him to come to her this time, to dance to his tune in step while always staying a cautious inch ahead. The burden of two lives she found sometimes difficult. Her night terrors, the dark circles under her eyes and amusingly, the insomnia which now haunted them both. All of these things to which others credited the Cuthintal. What they could never know was just how easily she learned how to suppress its power. By then, it was habit; an action by rote.

Life with Duliae was lived comfortably and her leisure this time, though she did often make excuses to travel. Her beloved was a book that while unendingly complex and at times, frustrating, she somehow knew by heart. She could placate him with a few words, anticipate his moods (more or less) and maintain a distance that allowed him to live to his wishes. It was in this life that finally they had children and at last, she could be free to explore yet again.

This life simply felt like the closing chapter. Perhaps it was truer in this way, to their first. Every moment of domestic bliss was a seal to the wounds left by their life of excitement. When Duliae passed, it was much like the first time and here, in the completion of their cycle she crawled beneath the covers of their shared bed and breathed in his scent, departed once more to live again.

But even after, long after she elected to simply explore the variables and live as freely as she’d learned to, she would think of him. At times, she even chose to rely on him (though without intimacy, trust was tentative at best). But all in all, Duliae was an interminable part of her story. In this comforting way, the dance between them could never truly end. 

Those first three lives would always be his.


End file.
